Cartoonbank.com .\.' :: /' ".., ' . : ,-'iþ...;> T ./ " ! ' <;,\ . ..... / , . i." , . . I.:, ' f\ ' t(' 1t<" " .t., "'-. ' ') 'r.," > '\ :> !\ "< ',,\ ',, ,: </:".',. . \ ,g U 'I:) , i, " ::::! .< . z 8 ..... " :t?i : :: 'i::: , ., ,;':" '. ,'7 1. f-< ....;. ::: :!. .g . ,: -"- "* . .,' ",' " "E ..c: u :.<;-. ), .; .. .. .,> .- _: ... ,..... . "fjust got damn well fed up o with beingformal all the time." g @ II New Site! -License Cartoons Online Framed and Matted Cartoon Prints Original Cartoon Art Browse Our Extensive Database And Much, Much More or call 1.800.89 .8666 , .... CAR.TOONßANK.COM A New Yorker Magazine Company .".- .., .!:JCorbis B izP rese n te r. CO moo EXCLUSIVE PRESENTATION PARTNER 40 THE NEW YORKER., JULY 30, 2001 "0 u 1:: v ...c:: b!) seventies, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, an East German refugee who was then as- sociated with the University of Heidel- berg, developed a new method for pre- serving human tissue. He replaced the cell water and soluble fat in human flesh with polymers, a process of infusion which left the tissues almost unchanged in appearance. Such "plastinated" or- gans and body sections soon turned up in medical and mortuary schools. Skele- tons had long been available for study, and organs had been pickled or encased in plastic blocks, but von Hagens made it possible for any medical facility to have a supply of the necessary speci- mens, suitable for handling. They could be made flexible or firm, depending on the formula used in the infusion process, and, unlike specimens preserved by other methods, von Hagens's retained the shape and color of living organs. Von Hagens estimated that flesh treated this way would last for at least a hundred thousand years. Nobody objected to von Hagens's anatomical specimens as long as they were used in a scientific setting. The trouble started when von Hagens dis- covered what he calls "gestalt plasti- nation"-a method of infusing whole bodies-and began posing corpses and displaying them in exhibitions at sci- ence museums in Europe and Japan, where they have drawn millions of viewers. One of his works is a man who has been skinned and split longitu- dinally, his separate muscular halves standing a foot or so apart. His brain and spinal column are propped between the halves, with the eyeballs and the lungs attached in the appropriate places. The rest of the viscera have been re- moved from their usual positions for clearer viewing: the man holds them in his hands. Although it resembles sculp- ture, this is an actual human body. An- other is a man posed as if running, his muscles peeled open-like bouquets of flowers, as their creator describes the ef- fect-to show underlying structures. A third is a skinned woman with her womb opened to show the five-month- old fetus she was carrying when she died. On average, at least one spectator faints per day at von Hagens's installa- tions. As public events, they have more in common with Robert Mapplethorpe's I photography or Damien Hirst's form- aldehyde cows than with the standard practice of anatomy. In Germany, religious leaders pres- sured politicians to stop the shows. "He who styles human corpses as a so-called work of art no longer respects the im- portance of death," the Catholic the- ologian Johannes Reiter proclaimed. Fellow-anatomists asserted that the ex- hibits were too complex for laymen and therefore could serve no educational purpose. But most of the critics, von Hagens told me recently, had not actu- ally seen his exhibitions. His defense of his work took on political overtones. "It's democratic," he said. "The layman is given back what he lost two hundred years ago"-a view of human anatomy uncensored by experts. Von Hagens re- ferred to his own past in C,ommunist East Germany; his current work, he said, is a form of "body liberation." He described rowdy teen-agers who arrive at his exhibits looking for grotesque spectacle but then quickly fall silent: "They come to see something ugly. They find themselves anew." Mter see- ing the exhibitions, some viewers de- cide to donate their own bodies, and von Hagens is generally happy to sign them up. B Oth von Hagens's work and the Vis- ible Human Project represent bat- tles in the long war between cultural taboos and scientific advancement. "1 think it's fabulous," said Victor Spitzer, the University of Colorado anatomist whose team did the work on Jernigan's body, when I asked him about von Ha- gens. ' nd if you're asking about the ethics 1 still like it." But, unlike von Hagens's subjects, Jernigan had no idea that he would be- come anything more than an anony- mous cadaver. Instead, his body has be- come the most intimately known in the world. In the eyes of some observers, he has been violated on the largest scale imaginable. His lawyer and friend Mark Ticer told me that Jernigan would have been uncomfortable with the macabre fame he has achieved. The question of privacy also came up in my conversations with Spitzer. "Someday, this man is going to get up and walk away," he said of an image of Jernigan on a computer screen. The technology to make the Visible Hu-